September 2010

Faculty Accomplishments

Bruce Bennett, Professor of English, chaired a Panel on the Villanelle at the 2010 West Chester Poetry Conference on
June 10th, 2010. He also presented a talk on Keats’s "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and
Yeats’s "The Song of Wandering Aengus" at the Yeats Critical Seminar at the West Chester
Poetry Conference on June 10th.

Tracy Brandenburg, Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish had the opportunityto both study and consult at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at
Stanford University in July. She studied in an executive program on "design thinking,"
and learned how to both implement, as well as teach this methodology. Design thinking
is used to solve difficult problems and arrive at innovative solutions. It employs
techniques from the arts, anthropology, business, and engineering.

Robert Ellis, Director of the Center for Business and Entrepreneurship, has been quoted on the Dow Jones Wire service, as well as in Ignites and FundFire, on different aspects of the wealth management industry. Ignites is an online newsletter for asset managers. FundFire, also owned by Source Media, is a retail-oriented newsletter that focuses on asset
management choices by individual wealth managers and advisors. FundFire recently quoted Ellis on the quality of senior execs at the four big wire houses;
what they were focusing on and whether it was the right thing to be concentrating
on for their firm.

Deborah Gagnon, Associate Professor of Psychology, delivered the opening keynote address at the New York Library Association's 2010
Academic Librarian's Conference held June 7-8 in Ithaca, NY. The conference theme
was 'Faster than the Speed of Bytes: Technology, Cognition, and the Academic Librarian;'
Dr. Gagnon discussed the intersection between brain, cognition, and technology and
its impact on library services in her talk 'This Is Your Brain on Technology: The
Technology Exposure Effect."

William Ganis, Associate Professor of Art History, had two articles appear the Summer 2010 issue of The Gather, published by the Corning Museum of Glass—These texts are: "Meet the Artist: April
Surgent" profiling a Seattle-based glass engraver; and "Masters of Studio Glass: Ji?í
Harcuba" previewing an upcoming exhibition of this Czech artist.

His article, "Shift Dress" on pâte de verre sculptor Mielle Riggie published the Summer
2010 issue of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly and his review of "Voices of Contemporary Glass: The Heineman Collection"exhibition at the Corning Museum of Glass appears in the same issue.

The Art Book, a publication of the Association of Art Historians— published Dr. Ganis’s review of Sheldon Barr’s book, Venetian Glass Mosaics: 1860-1917, in the Volume 17, Issue 3, August 2010 issue.

As director of Wells College’s String Room Gallery, Professor Ganis opened the first show of the 2010-11 season with "Ceramic Trompe
L’oeil: Walking with Softer Steps" featuring vessels by Eric Serritella. This exhibition
is on view from September 1 to October 7.

In another discipline, Dr. Ganis has his "Bakery and Bistro: Normal Bread—Red Dove
Tavern" article discussing relationship of a bakery and restaurant in Geneva, NY,
published in the Fall 2010 issue of Life in the Finger Lakes magazine.

Michael Groth, Professor of History, presented a paper entitled, "ABOLITIONISM AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF BLACK IDENTITY
IN THE MID-HUDSON VALLEY" at the 32nd Annual Meeting Of the Society for Historians
of the Early American Republic held in Rochester, NY in July.

Cynthia J. Koepp, Professor of History, reviewed Geraldine Sheridan's new book, "Louder Than Words:
Ways of Seeing Women Workers in Eighteenth-Century France" for the September issue
of H-France Review (Vol. 10, No. 128), the on-line journal of the Society for French
Historical Studies.

Laura J. McClusky, Associate Professor of Sociology, at the invitation of the Global Center of Non-Killing, submitted a chapter titled Ending Violence, Changing Lives: Identity, Domestic Violence and Culture Change in
Southern Belize. This chapter is now published in Non-Killing Societies (Honolulu, HI: Center for Global Non-Killing 2010).

Laura J. McCluskyproposed, and in collaboration with John Wells and Amy Torea of Wells College and
faculty and administrators at Galen University, developed and initiated a semester
abroad Off-Campus study program in Sustainable Community Development at Galen University,
Belize. This program, primarily for sophomores in the fall semester, and juniors and
seniors in the spring, allows students to learn first-hand about critical issues concerning
poverty, poverty alleviation, economic and environmental sustainability, cultural
survival and the maintenance of autonomy for communities in this multi-ethnic Central
American nation. McClusky also developed and coordinated an orientation for students
participating in this program. The orientation included a five day in-country field
experience (including exploration and skills acquisition) and a suggested set of readings
reflecting current research in the regions they visited.

McClusky is also serving as a judge for the New York State Sociological Association’s
graduate and undergraduate student prize for best paper submitted to the annual conference.

Niamh O' Leary, Professor of Environmental Studies, had her article on carbon footprints, "Footprints by the Lake", published in the
summer 2010 issue of *Network News*, the newsletter of the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network.
The article highlighted Wells College's Climate Commitment signed by President Ryerson
in 2008.